While still physically intact Iran’s nuclear program has been hit from three fronts and according to Israel’s minister of strategic affairs the Iranian regime is now three years away from achieving an atomic bomb.

Speaking on local radio Mosche Yaalon said, “The Iranians are facing some technical challenges and difficulties which are preventing them from brining this program to a completion. In the 90s we thought that within 10 years they would have the nuclear abilities they didn’t. these difficulties are setting back the time table and that’s why we can’t talk at this moment about the point of no return. Iran right now doesn’t have the ability to produce on its own a nuclear bomb. It may happen in the next 3 years if the process is successful. I hope the efforts of the western world to prevent it will be successful and Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

The is a huge change from Israel’s drum beat of a nuclear Iran by the end of 2011.

Economic sanctions continue to prevent the regime’s ability to acquire both nuclear material and the equipment needed to refine it.

In the past month, assassins used car bombs to kill one of Iran’s top nuclear scientists and severely injure another. And experts are still trying to figure out exactly how much damage the Stuxnet computer virus caused to the systems running Iran’s various nuclear facilities.

Reports say websites dedicated to containing the virus are flooded with users from Iran.

Meir Javedanfar teaches Iranian studies at one of Israel’s leading universities and wrote an English biography on president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “”Iran is going to continue to work on its nuclear program. President Ahmadinejad has said so. And there is no sign Iran is stopping the civilian or military track of its nuclear program. What its going to do is make the Iranian government more careful about sabotage by international intelligence agencies,” he said.

While the Israel government refuses to comment on any involvement in the assassinations or virus attacks…
Israeli military and diplomatic officials abroad have been warned to take extra security precautions out of fear Iran will seek revenge for the killings of their scientists.